


A Feast of Hearts

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Hannibal (TV), Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Apocalypse, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, M/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: It's not just Virginia, or the East Coast, or the US, and the news comes out with the stilted care rational people use when they talk about ghosts:  not wanting to admit they believe and be taken for lunatics, but at the same time relieved to have lunacy as an option.





	A Feast of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> So I'll be honest here, every time Crowcatcher starts giving me problems, I'm just going to sit down and write ridiculous Hannibal crossovers with my existing fandoms or ridiculous fixit fics because I'm easy like that. Crossovers are my entirely guiltless pleasure anyway. XD

Will hadn't thought he'd ever be grateful again to just sit back and let Hannibal drive, but this last case has been draining. Those dead horses; Clark Ingram's empty eyes and plastic smiles; having to stand back in the end and watch Peter be hauled away after all, though at least not for murder. Nothing has gone quite right from the beginning, and even his victories feel like half-measures.

Getting stuck in a car with a man he used to trust when all he wants is to turn his brain off for a little while isn't the worst thing that's happened to him today alone, and he just...doesn't care. Will's already giving Hannibal plenty of chances to mind-fuck him outside of work. If he tries it tonight, Will's going to reach over and turn up the radio as loud as it will go, and if Hannibal tries to stop him, he'll get out and walk. He is officially not in the mood.

Hannibal glances over at him twice, considering and concerned, as Will sinks lower into the passenger seat. Will imagines Hannibal suggesting that he get some sleep, but the fantasy splits there between punching the asshole as hard as he can and giving common sense and sanity the finger and nestling down to do just that. Leave Hannibal guessing. It's the only tactic that ever seems to work on the man, and he's still not certain whether that's down to simple wariness or the fact that Hannibal enjoys seeing what he'll do next.

"Are you warm enough?" Hannibal asks instead, reaching for the temperature control on the dash preemptively. Will tries not to feel bitter. Of course Hannibal would worry about his comfort _now_.

"Yeah, I'm-- _shit, watch the road_!" Will blurts, sitting bolt upright.

Hannibal's head whips back around at once, but he doesn't panic like most people would and slam on the brakes. He's got snow tires but no chains on the Bentley, and the roads have just enough of a fresh coat of snow that a sharp deceleration would probably land them in the ditch. He brakes smoothly--too smooth and too slow, and Will cringes as the dark shape that had loped out into the road remains frozen, huge saucer eyes glowing golden in the glare of the headlights.

It bounds out of their path at the last moment, but as they coast to a stop, the relief Will expects doesn't come. That...what the hell had that even been? His first impression had screamed _dog_ , but the massive shoulders and low-set hips say _hyena_...if hyenas came in matte black with twin lamps for eyes.

Will scrabbles at his seatbelt, but not for the catch to open it. Something deep in his hindbrain tells him he doesn't _want_ to get out of the car to investigate.

Hannibal reaches again for the console, only to turn the music off. Idling, the Bentley's engine is a muted hum, unobtrusive. The empty stretch of road is quiet and still, the predawn gloom deeper now that the moon's gone down, dimming the shine of snowglare off the lowering clouds above.

Will breathes out a slow, shaky breath. Just a dog, probably, and his too-active imagination playing tricks on him. What else could he have--

He sees the eyes before he sees the creature: two round, amber orbs with no discernable pupils, glowing like lanterns. They rise up out of the ditch on Hannibal's side of the road, nowhere near the beam of the Bentley's headlights. When it slinks out onto the road, Will's breath catches in his throat. That's not a dog, unless it's straight out of his nightmares. It just needs antlers, or feathers.

He's so busy staring at the one creature, it doesn't occur to him that it might be part of a pack, not until something heavy collides with his window. Jumping so hard he bruises himself against the seatbelt, he whips around and comes face to face with a wide open maw skidding off the glass: a black tongue, black _teeth_ , set in a snarling black muzzle. Claws scratch at the door with an unpleasant screech, and the entire car rocks as something jumps up onto the trunk.

Settling both hands on the wheel, Hannibal looks straight ahead and lowers his foot on the accelerator, slowly at first until the tires gain traction. The thing on the trunk wobbles clumsily and goes tumbling off into the snow. In the rear view mirror, Will watches it roll to its feet and join at least three others in chase of them.

"What the hell?" Will manages at last, belatedly drawing his firearm. "What were those--"

"My apologies," Hannibal says, eerily calm, "but I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to be quiet now."

"What--?"

Will turns first to Hannibal then to the road ahead, a lump of ice congealing in his guts.

Fuck. There's more of them.

The Bentley's a good, solid car, heavy enough and balanced enough that Will hadn't had any qualms about being ferried through ice and snow in the thing. He's a little more leery about its uses as a battering ram, but Hannibal doesn't hesitate. They're doing at least fifty as they punch through a knot of those hyena things, but the impact is sharp and strangely brief. Will grits his teeth, steeling himself against the yelps sure to follow, but when the car slams into the mass of black bodies, he watches in disbelief as they shred like smoke and fade away.

"Shit," he breathes, Hannibal's warning and need for concentration flying right out the window. "I'm dreaming." Even knowing what Hannibal's capable of, he's gone and fallen asleep in the man's car again because some idiot part of him is still convinced he's safe.

"You're not," Hannibal says shortly. "And I believe we're about to have greater problems."

Will laughs, incredulous. What could possibly be worse than a pack of nightmare monsters on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere?

As they fly up a small rise and Will sees the veritable sea of headlights coming their way, Will guesses he's got his answer. If he's really awake--and his dreams are usually more symbolic, not action-adventure horror movies--then this isn't just a case of isolated weirdness. Whatever's happening, it's got people fleeing the city as well.

"Hold on," Hannibal orders, and all Will can do is brace himself as Hannibal floors it, driving right into the teeth of the exodus coming their way.

There's a lot of angry horns sounding off as cars try to pass each other on the snowy shoulders, already taking up both lanes of the two-lane highway. The noise increases as they catch sight of the Bentley, and Will grits his teeth fiercely to keep from yelling at Hannibal to pull over. He might win a game of chicken with the car in front, but there's a million more behind, and they're not _invincible_.

He doesn't even see the turnoff until they're already taking it, Hannibal fighting the wheel, the brakes, gravity itself as the Bentley goes into a controlled skid, end swapping for end once, twice, three times before they even out. They're turned away from the highway when Hannibal cautiously lays on the gas again, their left tires just starting to slide off the packed surface of a much narrower road before Hannibal pulls them out of the impending rut. Hannibal still looks completely unflustered, though he does let out one slow, steady breath.

"That's much easier with a stick shift," he says, mildly annoyed.

The laugh that bubbles out of Will is hysterical at best, but he chokes it back quickly. "I'm checking the radio," he warns, just in case Hannibal's the type to get territorial about his dials. He'd been too...awed, he supposes, to test that out while they were on friendlier terms, and he hadn't wanted to pick a fight earlier. Not over the radio, anyway.

"Be my guest."

 _Been there, done that, got the orange jumpsuit_ , he nearly says, but now's not the time.

It's not just Virginia, or the East Coast, or the US, and the news comes out with the stilted care rational people use when they talk about ghosts: not wanting to admit they believe and be taken for lunatics, but at the same time relieved to have lunacy as an option. The short version is that the world's been overrun with monsters, maybe aliens, and neither water nor the common cold have magically defeated them so far.

"I have to get back to the academy," Will says, suddenly aware again of the gun in his hand, currently resting on his knee. He'll turn it on Hannibal if he has to, but Hannibal merely looks over at him with a frown. "Whatever's going on, they probably need every able body. Maybe a surgeon, too."

He can't look at Hannibal, not now, knowing he's going to be let down, not when it's the hope more than the refusal sure to follow that's going to hurt the most.

"We'll have to take backroads," Hannibal says, politely ignoring the way Will slumps against the seatbelt, eyes closing in relief. "I doubt the freeways will be passable, and traveling on foot doesn't seem very safe."

He's right on every count.

The route Hannibal chooses takes them through a few small towns, and the weirdly quiet aftermath they cruise past leaves Will's skin crawling with gooseflesh. Doors stand open to cars, houses, the occasional business; a few broken windows gape, and here and there the snow's been churned as if from a fight. There's no blood and no bodies, but there's also no people. There's plenty of creeping shadow-things, though most of the ones he sees bear no resemblance to the hyena pack they met on the way. These are humanoid, mostly knee-height, but a few of them are larger. The little ones don't look that dangerous until he sees the numbers they swarm in, the sharpness of their claws.

He tries to reach Jack three times, but as expected, nobody's paying attention to the 'emergency calls only' rule right now. At this point it'd be more ominous if the call went through.

Things are suspiciously quiet as they approach the FBI Academy at Quantico. Will expects to be bypassed by waves of agents loaded for bear, roadblocks if they've had to fall back here, but there's just...nothing. He's holding on to his optimism by his fingernails, but when they pull onto Bureau Parkway and find nothing but more empty stillness, hope turns leaden in the pit of his stomach. And all right, yes, it had to have been pretty late in the evening when the first of those monsters showed up, so maybe most people had gotten stuck in the city, but every building they pass is lit up, pale against the early dawn sky, the parking lots full of cars that had slewed to a stop in a hurry.

"Maybe they've already headed out," Will says, speaking for the first time in what feels like decades.

"It's possible." Hannibal's perfectly noncommittal tone has been a source of both frustration and comfort in the past; its genuine lack of judgment makes his true feelings on any matter impossible to guess. It lets Will pretend Hannibal isn't just humoring him as he clutches at straws.

Will barely waits for the Bentley to roll to a stop before popping his seatbelt and diving out. There's got to be someone inside who can tell him what's going on, or if not he'll make his way up to Jack's office to see if he left some kind of battle plan. Rendezvous points, civilian centers they might have been sent to defend--he'll take anything at this point.

The brightly-lit lobby is deserted when he skids his way inside, though the floor is littered with spent casings. That...is not good, but while instinct urges him to back his way out again, he can't just leave without finding out whether there are any survivors. Another wave of disbelief hits him, because that's zombie apocalypse thinking, and while he'd like to say Hollywood has prepared him for this day, it clearly hasn't. He's still heading _into_ the creepy abandoned facility, even though he's certain that soundtrack music has started playing somewhere just for him.

Right. So. Rules of survival. Don't be a goddamn hero is number one on the list, but if that's unavoidable, don't announce your presence, don't go alone, and don't fucking hesitate if you feel like you're being watched.

He spins around, gun at the ready, only to stop and stare at a small puddle of darkness making its way across the floor. No, not across-- _through_ the floor. It's a bit like watching a fast-moving amoeba hunting for prey, except that it looks like a weirdly flattened version of those shadow-things.

Another one joins it, and then another from off to his right, and fuck--they're heading right for him.

He doesn't wait to find out what will happen if he lets them get under his feet. He opens fire on the first one, gets lucky and actually hits the thing, and watches it blow apart like a dashed puddle. Inky smoke rises up from the floor, but also a flash of something bright that flares once and winks out.

Watching a fully-formed shadow-thing rise out of the next crawling patch of darkness makes his brain hurt, but he keeps his hands as steady as he can make them as he pulls the trigger. He misses: the thing darts and meanders, its path completely unpredictable except that it's definitely coming closer. Backing away as he takes aim, he fires and fires again. Shit. That's four shots, and there's still one more.

Two more. No, five, and they're all between him and the door, him and the car, him and Hannibal.

Fuck. Where _is_ Hannibal?

He empties his revolver into the growing pack--six? seven?--and then there's no time to reload, even if he'd brought extra bullets. He has some notion of circling around them, but they're on him fast, oozing up out of the floor and leaping for him in almost the same move. They have more weight to them than he expects, and he goes down hard, tailbone sending a bright shock of pain up his spine that's met halfway by a second jolt when the back of his skull hits the floor. His teeth click together unpleasantly, but panic keeps him moving, thrashing and kicking against the jab of claws.

Scrabbling free, he flips over and gets a foot under himself, lunging up like a sprinter as something crashes into his back. It _climbs_ him, coming up over his shoulder like it means to tear his throat out, and he punches at it with the fist still wrapped around his gun. Claws rip the revolver away, but he manages to shrug the thing off, whirling around to fend off the next comer. Christ, he needs a weapon, anything, a fucking chair leg will do--

Instinct makes him close his hand around the warm pressure that stripes his palm. It's probably what makes him swing at the shadow-thing leaping for his face, what makes him grip harder at the hilt of the sword he's probably imagining instead of ducking. He's not prepared for the shiver of impact that races up his arm when the blade connects, shredding the shadow-thing to smoke, but he gets his other hand up quick to brace his next swing.

It's a clumsy attack at best, but his unexpected sword--suspiciously solid for a hallucination--bites into the creatures like it was made for the task, shredding them swiftly to wispy clots of darkness. Breathing heavily as the last one evaporates, he stumbles back and turns a wary circle, eyes darting in every direction as he waits for the next attack.

"Will?"

He jerks around to face the front doors and has to focus hard on his own self-disgust to shake off the relief he feels at seeing Hannibal there. Though Hannibal had kept up his unruffled air through the entire drive, there's a controlled intensity to him now that Will doesn't quite know what to do with. Hannibal is carrying a long hunting knife, one Will would swear he didn't have on him and wouldn't be stupid enough to carry around in his car, but the small scrape on Hannibal's knuckles and the few strands of hair falling out of place tell a different story.

\-- _Hannibal hesitating until he hears the first shot, steering wheel clutched tightly in his hands until one shoots out to pop the trunk, hurrying around the back to pull up the false bottom and scraping his skin raw as he grabs for the first tool to hand_ \--

"There's nobody here," Will says, even though he hasn't checked upstairs. He _knows_.

Hannibal frowns at the sword in Will's hand, which tugs Will's eyes reluctantly down to do the same. He's no expert on medieval weaponry, but there's something off about this one, even beyond it just appearing the moment he needed it. It's a manageable length, neither a showy two-hander nor short enough to get him in trouble, and he knows enough not to be surprised by the relatively light weight. What's making him rethink the hallucination thing is the hilt, which appears to be the head and body of a raven, its spread wings threaded through the branching points of antlers at the crosspiece. At the tip three steel feathers run down the edge in showy, useless spikes. He's surprised they didn't snap off in the fight.

"Where did you come by that?" Hannibal asks, tilting his head with a curious frown.

"Wish I knew," Will mutters. He does know he's not turning loose of it again. Not when it worked so well on those-- " _Watch out_!"

Hannibal half-turns and steps aside as one of the little shadow-things pulls itself out of the floor practically at his feet, but then the thing just _stands_ there, cocking its head in perfect mimicry of Hannibal's fascinated look, its crooked antennae twitching. Hannibal stares back, fingers tightening once on the hilt of his knife, but they seem to have reached some sort of stalemate.

"Why isn't it attacking you...?" Will asks slowly. Suspicion tries and fails to take hold--he's been with Hannibal the entire evening--but he's never been fond of mysteries.

"I don't know."

Will scowls. "Well don't just stand there--"

He should know better by now than to ask Hannibal to do anything, because instead of backing away like a sensible person, Hannibal bends over and picks the thing up by the scruff of the neck.

"Hanni--what the fuck?"

The shadow-thing dangles like a kitten in Hannibal's grip, unblinking eyes placid as Hannibal leans fractionally closer to sniff the creature. Whatever he smells makes his eyebrows arch in surprise.

"Curious. It smells almost entirely of pure darkness."

Unbelievable. "I didn't know 'darkness' had a smell," Will says, edging cautiously closer. He's not looking forward to prying that thing off Hannibal when it inevitably tries to take a chunk out of him, but tearing strips off Hannibal is a pleasure he intends to reserve for himself. Figuratively. Probably. God.

"Mm. It's a scent uniquely itself, but most often hidden beneath modifiers. Like trying to describe the scent of water without resorting to salt or chlorine."

"O...kay? So that thing's...dark like what? Dark night, heart of darkness, the...blackness from the stars?"

Hannibal surprises him by getting that last reference immediately. "Less Lovecraftian, I would think, than...." Another slow inhale. Hannibal's eyes fall half-closed. "Hm."

Will frowns. He's close enough to kill the thing now, but it barely twitches an antennae in his direction. "What?"

"Hearts," Hannibal says succinctly, lifting the creature an inch higher as intense curiosity sharpens his gaze.

"What?" Will asks again, closing a hand on Hannibal's shoulder and half-turning the man to face him. "What do you mean? What hearts? _Why_ hearts? What did--what did you smell?"

He's wished he could ask his dogs that a time or two, but it's such a bizarre question to ask another person. The answer he gets is about as informative as if he _had_ asked the dogs.

"Something I never expected to sample so clearly. I've always wondered if it'd have a scent if uncoupled from the myriad distractions of the body."

"If _what_ would?" Will demands through gritted teeth.

"What makes us unique." When he looks away from the creature at last, his focused gaze turns hot and hungry. It's not the first time Hannibal's looked at him like he wants to _eat_ him, but it's the first time Will's been tempted to roll his eyes and mention time and place. "I almost wonder what your heart would smell like."

Will stands his ground despite the uncomfortable certainty that Hannibal isn't talking about blood and meat this time. Hannibal's had plenty of chances to kill him already, and if he's talking about...hearts, or maybe souls is the better term, then--

Wait. Is he saying that shadow-thing used to be _human_?

He's still reeling over that thought when Hannibal drops the creature to the ground, snaps his fingers as if summoning a pet, and strides purposefully for the door.

"What--where are you going?" Will protests, deeply unsurprised to see the shadow creature following docilely at Hannibal's heels.

"To test a theory."

"What _theory_?"

Hannibal doesn't answer. When he sweeps out, Will catches a glimpse of large, dark shapes circling the Bentley, noses to the ground.

Jesus. Hannibal's going to get himself killed, and that...that's not something he's allowed to do, not on his own, least of all for some fucking _experiment_.

Tightening his grip on his weird mystery sword, Will sucks in a deep breath, gathers himself, and chases after Hannibal, kicking himself mentally all the while.

It's too damned familiar, and it's getting to be a habit.

**Author's Note:**

> Is it Halloween yet? I really want it to be Halloween. *flails*


End file.
